Jenny (00:29)
Welcome back to another episode of the Six Figure Flower Farming Podcast. And today we are diving into farming tools and equipment that save you time and money. I'm going to help you discover which tools are actually worth investing in based on real world return on investment, both in save time and save labor costs from my personal experience and my, really my personal experience only, but also I know a lot of other flower farmers.
have had really good success with the tools I'm going to talk about. And I'm going over about 18 or so tools and pieces of equipment that we use on the farm pretty regularly that I would never go back to living without. When I first started my flower farm, I didn't have very many tools or
pieces of equipment or tractors. didn't have those options because I really wasn't in the budget. And so slowly over time, every year we reinvest into new tools that will save us time and money, new tractor implements, even new kinds of tractors. And so we do a ton of hand work on our farm. We're very small scale, just one acre, but we also,
Are not afraid to use tractors and tools and equipment to help make our lives easier, to get things done faster. And maybe most importantly, save our bodies because flower farming can be really rough on your body when you are just dragging rocks around and digging in the dirt and carrying heavy buckets around all the time. It's hard on your body. So we got to do what we can to take care of ourselves.
So the goal of this episode is to help make your life easier and make your farm more profitable. So the first little group of tools and equipment I want to talk about how amazing they are is tools that you would use for field work. So these are things that would help you. Bed prep, flip your beds and sort of just like manage your growing beds more efficiently. The first one and
By the way, these are not in any real particular order of importance or anything. It's just a big list of tools and equipment that I love. But the first one is a tractor. I know there's a lot of farms out there who are sort of against using a tractor or feel like they can't afford a tractor or they want to use all hand tools and absolutely no shade on anybody who wants to do that. I think it's great.
I just know that I farmed without a tractor for years, not very long, but several years. And it was awful. It was, I didn't realize at the time how awful it was, but it was so hard on my body and it just makes life so much easier.
So the first tractor we bought and all of the tractors we've ever bought have always been very, very old and very, very used. But the first one didn't even have any implements or anything that came with it. We bought a plow for it to plow our driveway. And at some point I was like, this is dumb. We have this tractor and I'm farming and don't have like anything with it that I could use. So I invested in some implements for it. And then soon after we upgraded,
to another very, very old, very, very used tractor that had a bucket on it. The bucket on that tractor to simply move things around the farm that I didn't have to carry myself or push in a wheelbarrow probably put years back onto my life. So I highly recommend considering investing in a tractor at some point. So we have.
Several different tractors now, mostly just because my husband is a tractor collector. He is very much a lover of all kinds of tractors, but the one that we use the most on the farm, or guess the ones that we use most on the farm, have a Ford. Actually they're both Fords. We have two Fords. One is a 50 horsepower and the other one is about 55 horsepower. And the 55 horsepower tractor is also four wheel drive.
That one was way more expensive than the other ones we've bought, but all of the tractors we have purchased have cost anywhere between $5,000 and $15,000, which honestly is not that much money. You do not have to go out and buy a brand new Kubota tractor for $75,000, $100,000. You can buy used equipment that's old and works perfectly well.
But save yourself a pile of money. So I love using our tractor to move things around the farm, to do field work, ⁓ do bed prep out in our like field prep. And, ⁓ just for everyday stuff, moving compost from the field to the compost pile, all those kinds of things. We also have a skid steer, which I use probably more than anything. The skid steer we also bought very, very used kind of old.
So again, not new, but we bought something that we could afford at the time. And I think I spent about $10,000 on the skid steer, which if you've ever looked into buying them, that's super cheap. So there was something wrong with it that we had to fix. ⁓ but we, my husband is pretty handy. Our friend owns, or I guess he works at a small engine repair place and we enlisted their help to get it fixed. So we could use it. if you don't know anybody with those capabilities,
I'm pretty sure it would have been just as good of a decision for me to invest in a small engine repair company or maybe not small engine. That's not the right word, but pay someone to fix the very small thing that was wrong with it. Then buy a $50,000 brand new skid steer. So we have attachments for this, like a bucket forks, a flail mower, which is a huge time saver.
We use the bucket to move things around when we get shipments of things like crates or plugs or soil or whatever. use the forks to move it off the truck and wherever it needs to go. And the flail mower is huge for like basically cleaning up the farm at the end of the year. We use that film or we've also used a brush hog or sometimes even a finished mower attachment on our tractors before.
to clean up the field at the end of the year. like mow down all the dahlias, all the peonies, all the plants. It's a huge time saver. We also have a BCS, which is a walk behind the tractor, a walk behind a tractor, excuse me. It's great for smaller spaces, like inside of hoop houses. ⁓ We have a sickle mower for it. And I think we also have a rototiller attachment.
Our BCS we bought for $300 from a friend who bought one a long time ago and didn't want it anymore. So we got an amazing deal on it because new, think that they're, I don't know, they're probably between eight and $10,000. No, they could be more than that. Now, the last time I looked into it was like pre COVID. So these are great for small spaces, but I find that they're kind of difficult to use and navigate. would rather just sit on a tractor or sit in my skid steer and use it. So.
I'm bringing up the BCS because it's definitely not one of my number one tools. However, it could be useful. I instead would invest in probably a skid steer over a BCS in order to access some of those smaller spaces, like a hoop house. Like we use our skid steer in our hoop house all the time and it's great. And it's just way more versatile and we can use it for more like heavy lifting of things. We can also move compost around with it.
So I would invest in a skid steer over a BCS anytime. Okay. So I feel like that was sort of like a two in one attractor in a skid steer, but those are my first must have tools and equipment to use on the farm. Moving on to the next one. It is a few implements and I'm sort of lumping the implements into one tool and equipment, even though there are several different ones, but
several implements that we use with our tractor. So our tractors have a three-point hitch system that we use these implements on. So I often use, well, I guess not often, but we use it enough, a plow, a disc harrow, and a spring-tooth harrow implement with our tractor. And we use these for our bed preparation out in the field. In the field, we don't have permanent beds. We don't have a permanent bed system like we do
In our hoop houses, most of what we grow on the farm is grown in hoop houses, like 90 % except for dahlias and sometimes zinnias. So we're doing most of our growing in a permanent bed, like low till no till system inside of our hoop houses, but in the field, I found that incredibly difficult to manage. In fact, I found it basically impossible. There's a lot of reasons for this, but basically.
You can't control the weather and we get so much rain here most years that it is just so hard to keep up with the weeds out in the field. Our soil turns to concrete on the top.
I've really struggled to get our field soil, like so soil that's not covered by plastic, not covered by a greenhouse or hoop house to a point where it was really friable and had a really good tilt to it. I found that really difficult. And I have a feeling a lot of other flower farmers are experiencing that too. So in the field where we plant things like our dahlias, we start off by preparing the soil with a plow. we use traditional tillage outside.
Then we use a disc harrow, which basically has these discs on it that knock the soil clods down and sort of like break up the soil. And then we finish our last implement we use on the field is something called a spring tooth harrow, which basically helps to make a fine and level even seed bed so we can then plant into it. If I had tried to manage my entire farm,
just by hand without doing that out in the field, it would be way more difficult. Even if you use like a rototiller, I still think it would be really, really hard to manage like anything over a scale of like half an acre. It would just be a lot. And so I'm all for making my life and everyone else's life easier, not harder by using big tools and equipment like this.
Now I don't want to get into a whole discussion on like no till versus tillage and all the things that come with that. That's probably a chat for another episode. ⁓ I'm definitely, as you can tell, not dogmatic about anything or any principle. think there's a time and a place for almost everything. So let's move on to talk about some more tools. The next tools and equipment I'm going to talk about are for bed prep and irrigation.
And bed prep specifically in a hoop house. So these are time-saving tools for preparing beds and keep them going strong and also doing water management. So the first one is a tilther. This is, I think a relatively newer tool on the market, like within probably the last 10 years or so, I could be wrong about that, but it's basically a little mini
Rota tiller, but it only disturbs the top like inch of the soil. And we use it for incorporating amendments into the top of the soil and for creating a nice, smooth seed bed. So we use this inside of our hoop houses. Every time we do bed prep, I feel like a bed prep and bed flipping is going to be like a theme here because that is one of our major struggles with manpower. Like it takes a lot to prepare soil and to clean up soil and to get rid of crop residue.
or just, know, your flowers at the end of the year that you want to cut down and get rid of. That's what I mean by crop residue. It takes a lot to do that. And I find using tools and equipment really helps ease the burden with that. So this might be like a theme that comes up here, but this tilter you can get, there's different ones available. Johnny's selected seeds makes one minus from never sink farm tools. And I have absolutely loved it. It's been a total game changer.
So when we first started doing our low-till, no-till system inside of our hoop houses, we would just put compost on top of our beds and leave it there. Because that's what we read was best for the soil, yada, yada. It did not work for us at all. It became hydrophobic, so it repelled water.
When we transplanted plugs into it, couldn't be too deep because the plugs actually needed to touch soil, not just compost to really get established. And, and this could totally be the type of compost that we were using at the time. ⁓ but it just didn't work for us. And we felt that it took a super long time for the compost to break down our compost. The place we get it from it has like a lot of wood chips in it. So it just, it just didn't work.
But we found that when we started incorporating our compost and amendments into the soil, which you really should be doing anyways, if you are incorporating any kind of like granular fertilizer or anything. the nitrogen just kind of like poof goes away if it's exposed to air. But anyhow, when we just gently incorporated it, it worked so much better. Our soil tilth improved massively. Our plants did better. The soil was happier.
⁓ it was great for everything. And this tilter tool helped us do that. So not only that, does it incorporate any amendments that you put onto your growing beds? It also creates this super fine, smooth seed bed that you can use to easily transplant into. So if you've ever tried to transplant into ground where it's like super hard and you're like digging a landscape staple in or a, a trowel or something, trying to plant, like you will not have this problem with this tool.
But the key is you have to do it right before you transplant. You can also use this super fine seed bed to use a gritter or some kind of like marking implement or a dibbler or something like that. If you wanted to mark out where your plants are going to go, makes it really great. So really quick surface prep without any major soil disturbance.
Next tool are wobbler sprinklers. So there are these specific overhead sprinklers that we put on these PVC pipe risers. If you just Google like wobbler sprinkler, I'm sure it'll come up. think Senninger is the brand that we have. You can also buy these from NeverSync Farm Tools as well. Man, you guys should sponsor us because I'm talking you up in this episode. Connor Crickmore, I might have to contact them about this, but anyhow. ⁓
We've really liked using these overhead sprinklers for irrigating out in the field and also for overhead watering large areas just after transplanting. They're really efficient. They have pretty uniform irrigation. So a lot of ⁓ other irrigation sprinklers don't really have like very uniform watering. get like wet spots and dry spots, but these have worked really, really well.
Moving on to the next tool, our hose rails. So even though we do use these overhead sprinklers, the wobbler sprinklers to water in large areas after transplanting, cause you know, you really want to water things in well. We usually in our hoop houses will just use a regular like hose with a attachment on it. So we use wonder waterers to water most of our plants. Love them. Great tool. Highly recommend. But.
If you're not transplanting multiple beds at a time and you're just transplant like a half a bed or, you know, one bed, it's just kind of makes more sense to use a hose in a lot of our cases. But we found that dragging hoses around was super inefficient, really annoying and makes you want to swear and throw things. So we bought hose reels and installed them up really high.
In all of our hoop houses. So every hoop house on our farm, all of our big hoop houses, at least have a hose reel that is up high. So when you pull the hose reel all the way to the end of the hoop house, so our hoop houses are 96 feet long. It's not dragging on the ground and they have the automatic reel back. I don't know if that's the right word for it. Reel back, whatever. ⁓ when you pull on it, it will automatically roll it back up. So don't have to crank like a handle.
to roll up the hose again. So those automatic rewinding hose reels have been a major game changer just in not just efficiency, but like making the work more enjoyable because that's really important here as well. We also never get kinks in our hoses. So yay for that. Next tool are wire weeder. So you've probably heard me talk about these before, but I love a wire weeder. We have handheld ones. We have long handled ones.
But if you prioritize getting weeds at thread stage with these tools, ⁓ it's just the best. Now, obviously you could have a tine weeder or a basket weeder or a finger weeder, any kind of cultivator as an implement on your tractor as well. But in our hoop houses specifically, we use these wire weeders and they work great. Okay, moving on to my...
Second to last section of tools here. These next tools are great for transporting and like mobility of things. And I have two pieces of equipment here. The first one is a gator or a golf cart or a ATV type of thing that has a little bed on it. We have a John Deere Gator and we use it more than anything else on the farm. It's just so convenient.
if you're walking and trust me, I don't get as much exercise as I used to when I first started my farm and I would walk everywhere. At one point I tried riding a bike to get places faster, but I hate biking. Not my thing. So when we got this John Deere Gator, I am able to zoom around the farm, transport things, go super fast, carry buckets of flowers. We also have a harvest van too, that we carry lots and lots of buckets of flowers in, but gosh, just saves.
hours and back and forth and around the farm and hauling stuff. The next one in this section are rolling racks. So we used to physically carry buckets of flowers from our studio into our cooler back out again. like, you know, anywhere from like 20 to 50 plus buckets or more, probably more actually. Yeah, definitely more than that at a time, picking them up like one or two at a time and going back and forth.
When I finally invested in some rolling racks, just like a rolling shelving unit, basically that has wheels where you can just put like 15, well, probably not 15. Let me think. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, nine, like nine to 10 buckets on at once and just roll it across the room. Oh my God saves your back saves time and energy. Amazing. So I would say that those rolling racks.
and the Gator are probably worth it at like any stage of business that you're in. Like any scale that you're at, I would invest in those. All right, now moving on to my final section of tools here that I highly recommend for your farm are sort of multi-purpose and power tools. like multi-purpose tools and power tools. The first one is a steel
multi-tool and it's actually called a combi system. So this is essentially like a battery powered tool. It looks like a string trimmer or a weed eater, but you can remove the string trimmer and you can put other pieces and parts onto it. So we have a scythe tool, which we use to mow down beds of
flowers were done with. So when a flower crop is over, any of that residue that's there, we'll use this to mow it all down. If we're not using something like our flail mower on our skid steer, we also have a pole saw attachment for it. We have this little, I'm not really sure what it's called. I should have looked this up, but it's a cutter tool to use to like take down little saplings. ⁓ and then of course we have the string trimmer or weed eater as well. So I really have enjoyed using that and all the different
tools you can get with them. The next one is a battery powered hedge trimmer, which is a surprising favorite for quick bed flipping or cleanup. So this has worked really well for sort of like slightly woodier plants, like eucalyptus or like certain perennials. It works really good for cleanup with that. We, also have this little mini chainsaw that my dad actually got me for Christmas one year because some of our eucalyptus in our tunnels
Gets massive. Like it will be like four inches thick at the bottom, like literally growing into a tree. If we just don't harvest all of it, or if we forget to pinch a couple of plants or something like that. And I've used that before too, to sort of cut things back and clean up at the end of the year.
Moving on for my last two tools of the day. This next one is a steel auger. So I bought a very, very large auger. It's a handheld auger. It's a steel brand, but you can get a bunch of different brands that makes digging hundreds of holes super quick and consistent. And I specifically bought this tool for planting our peonies. So we have far too many peonies planted on the farm. ⁓
I'm embarrassed to even tell you the number because it's a lot, but it's probably around something like 1500. And when we were planting them over the years, I always wanted them in landscape fabric because I am just not dealing with mowing in between the aisles all the time. That's not something I want to spend my time doing or anybody's time doing. think mowing is a waste of time, even though we do have to do it. And it's very important, but because of that, we would burn holes.
I never wanted to cut them because then the fabric frays, we'd burn holes, but then we'd have to hand dig those holes to plant our peony roots into. So instead I bought this auger and it just makes drilling hundreds of holes super easy. We've tried it in a lot of different planting situations, but I would say we pretty much just used it for that, like planting perennials.
And our, ⁓ peonies and landscape fabric. it's worked really well for that, but it's not a tool that we use all the time. And finally, my last tool on the list that you should definitely go out and buy is a battery operated backpack sprayer for years. I just use the pump action backpack sprayers and they're fine. They were great. We still have some on our farm, but at some point I invested in an upgrade to a
battery operated one so you no longer have to pump and it just emits a very regular consistent spray. So no matter what you're spraying, if it's compost tea, if it's biologicals, if it no matter what it is, it makes it so much easier. It's very precise and has way less fatigue on your body than regular pump sprayers. Okay.
So there is my list of must have tools and equipment to consider when you're flower farming to make your life easier and to get back time and money because we all know that time is money and all of these things I listed are going to save you so much time on the farm and they're gonna save your body, they're gonna save you labor costs. It just makes life more enjoyable. And now,
This is a pretty long list of tools and we have lots more on our farm that we use on a daily basis or on a yearly basis, annual basis. And it took us a long time to build up this collection of tools. And there's probably things on our farm that we've bought before that we tried out that didn't get used that we've gotten rid of, or maybe we still need to get rid of. So you don't have to buy it all at once. You can do it a little bit at a time, but start
With what will give you the highest ROI in your current season or will remove like a really big headache or frustration for you. Most of these tools pay for themselves quickly in either labor saved faster production. But that being said, it wouldn't hurt to sit down and do a cost analysis to see actually how much it's going to cost you every time you use that tool. If you need help doing something like that, that's things that we go over in my online course.
My business program for flower farmers called six figure flower farming registration for that is coming up in November, but, ⁓ highly recommend doing that. So you're not just buying like a really expensive piece of equipment that you're only going to use a couple of times a year. So I would encourage you to evaluate tools in that way, like not just by cost, but how much time does this save me? Like what's my time worth? Is this really going to be worth it?
So thanks for joining me for this episode of the Six Figure Flower Farming Podcast. I hope this was helpful and gave you a little bit of insight into tools and equipment you could possibly use on your farm that will save you time and money. If you found any of this helpful or valuable, I would really appreciate it if you would share it with a flower farming friend or leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. That helps me a lot to know that I'm doing an okay job at this, because I am trying really hard.
And it also helps other small scale flower farmers find the information that they need to create a profitable and sustainable business as well. Don't forget that we are publishing new episodes every Monday. So don't forget to come back and listen to the next one. I'll see you next week. Same time, same place. Bye for now.
